


birthday boy, you've blown out your candle

by requiodile



Series: you've paid your undue debts with the coin of your heart [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gaslighting, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Physical Abuse, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:25:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/requiodile/pseuds/requiodile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-TWS, takes place in July of 2013. </p><p>Steve tries very hard. Sometimes, he tries too hard, and misses some things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birthday boy, you've blown out your candle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nimmieamee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/gifts), [eatingcroutons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatingcroutons/gifts).



Rumlow taps him on the shoulder three hours in. "You sure you want to stay?" he asks. They're not looking at each other--they just happen to be posted side-by-side, on a rooftop overlooking the huge, clamorous crowd that's gathered for the fireworks set to go off an hour before midnight. "You're Team Lead, yeah, but a puny little bomb threat like this—we can handle it, no big deal."

"If it wasn’t a big deal, they wouldn’t have called us in,” Steve replies. He doesn’t look up from the scope of his sniper rifle. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to being on this particular end of one, no matter how many times he’s undergone training for it. Physically? No problem. Psychologically? It still feels like he’s borrowing, even when it’s not even the same kind of gun as the one that—

Nevermind. It doesn’t feel right to be pointing it into the middle of the crowd, but Steve’s eyes might just be the best in the world. If anyone can pick out a potential bomber hidden in the middle of hundreds of people, it’s Steve, the only supersoldier alive. What a joy.

“It’s your _birthday_.”

Steve doesn’t bother shrugging. It’ll jostle his aim. He scans another row of people, then another. “Here’s to hoping the only explosions that go off will be the ones in the sky.”

Rollins’ voice goes off in their in-ear communicators. “Sir, we’ve already detained several suspects, more than how many bombers they warned would be on-site—it’s not a stretch to say that we can downgrade security just a bit. I can tell that some of the civilians in the crowd have military experience; they’ve seen us, and they’re looking pretty nervous.”

“I know. I’ve seen them. Keep searching, and stay on high alert.”

It’s quiet for a while. Steve’s team, they’re a good crew. Efficient. They look out for him, even if it means insinuating things that compromise civilian safety. Understandable, but it’s something that he needs them to stop doing. Steve’s fine.

It’s another hour before Rumlow speaks again. “Don’t you have someone waiting for you at home, Cap?”

“No.”

“A dog, c’mon, a man’s gotta have a dog.”

“Nope.”

“Your neighbors?”

“Pretty sure they’re busy. They might even be down there somewhere.”

“ _Something_. Even just a couple of beers in your fridge?”

Steve snorts. “Alcohol hasn’t worked on me since 1943.” God, does he wish it worked.

It goes quiet, again, until Rollins asks, “Sir, are you free tomorrow?”

Of course Steve is free. Besides work, he has absolutely nothing, in more ways than one. He might visit Peggy, but the last time he’d seen her, the nurse had said that her family had planned to take her out to stay at one of their homes for the whole week. She wouldn’t be back at the nursing home until Sunday, and it’s only Thursday night. There’s some non-urgent recon he could do with Natasha, but she’s doing a solo mission and wouldn’t be back until the Sunday _after_. Clint’s been cleared for missions again, but he’s been posted on an international detail with an indefinite end. Fury doesn’t like it when Steve takes fresh agents on minor missions. Something about them being too distracted by a national icon and about Steve being too useful elsewhere, even if that elsewhere means he’s wandering aimlessly around D.C. because he’s tired of sifting through the online library catalog for history books to buy and read.

“Not really.”

There’s a collective groan over the line; Cruz, Fielding, Washburn, Swanson, and Oates all join in.

“Pardon, but don’t be a stick-in-the-mud for your own _birthday_. Sir. I don’t think any of us have anything planned, come join us for a boy’s night,” Fielding pleads. “Even if booze is nothing but soda pop for you, it can’t hurt to have some company. None of us know what you do on your own time.”

“I’d like to keep it that way,” Steve answers.

“One night,” Rumlow suggests. “One. It can just be a movie at your place, canned beans with bacon and beer.”

Steve ignores him. He likes Rumlow, he does. They work well together, and more than once it’s just been him and Steve on an op, sometimes with Natasha as backup. Rumlow’s got his back, Steve knows that, but there’s something about having the man _see_ his back that makes him skittish. It’s not about Rumlow, it’s just that there’s nothing to see—and maybe that’s the kind of thing that’ll make Rumlow turn away, because what’s the point of being pals with somebody who doesn’t really exist?

“Hey.” Steve blinks, rapidly, at the sudden, unusual kindness of Rumlow’s voice. “They want to know what kind of guy they’re following,” he says. “We’re not out here for ourselves. We’re out here for each other.”

That’s…unfair. Rumlow knows him too well. “Low blow,” Steve mutters, under his breath. Louder, he says, “They already know. I’m Captain America.”

“Yeah, and Rollins is Jack and I’m Brock. Who’s Steve? Is he a guy you can have a couple of beers with? That’s all we’re asking.”

“We? You’re including yourself? I thought we had something, Brock.” Steve can hear the wet part of Brock’s lips from his teeth, splitting to flash a broad, pointed grin. Shit, Brock knows he’s won this one.

“Saturday, your place. How about—four? Might as well make it a barbecue.”

“I call steaks, I know a good place to get them,” Oates laughs. He’s got a bubbly voice, which always seems at odds with his shaven head and bulky mass. “I’ve got a good rib recipe, too.”

Cruz sounds pissed when he talks. “Fuck, I was going to call ribs. Screw you, I’m going to bring them anyway. Cap can judge.”

Steve lies there in silence, staring down at the clustered families with their eager, face-painted children, with their strollers and lawn chairs and coolers full of juice and sandwiches, while his team divvies up roles for his birthday party with gusto.

In the end, Brock claims the movie, cake, and hard liquor. Jack is on beer duty and garnishes, while Hugh Fielding will bring potato salad and coleslaw. Darrell Washburn and Patrick Swanson will bring corn on the cob and beans and breadrolls; David Cruz and Cameron Oates already have split the meat between them. Steve’s only responsibility is to be the host.

“High-quality stuff,” David boasts. “None of that hotdog-hamburger-chalky buns shit, we’re gonna feed you the _real_ stuff.”

Like good men, they all sober up when the first spark alights in the dark sky—it illuminates the entire field, but none of their attentions are on the fireworks. The booms would mask any kind of noise a small bomb would produce, but fortunately, there’s nothing amiss for the entire seventeen minutes of celebration.

Steve and the team stay until the last person leaves the field. That’s around four in the morning, when the cleaning crew is all done. He and Brock pack up their equipment, taking the time to stretch after such a long stint of immobility. “Rest up, yeah? Tomorrow, we’re going to _party_.” This statement is punctuated with a couple of heavy claps on Steve’s shoulder. It doesn’t feel bad, and Steve manages to crack him a lopsided smile. He owes that much, he supposes.

“Yeah, I. Thanks. Looking forward to it.”

Steve is, actually. He debriefs at the Triskelion, then goes to his apartment with the sun peeking down over the skyline. He showers, eats something out of his fridge, collapses into bed. It’s too soft. He falls asleep anyway.

Like usual, his dreams are full of intermittent patches of blinding pain and consumptive, abject solitude—his limbs seize and prickle, and he’d be choking on saltwater if it weren’t for the fact that the force of impact had driven all the air out of his lungs. He drifts, loose-limbed and helpless in the crushed cabin; the cold whisks away the energy from his body faster than his healing factor can repair his shattered limbs and perforated organs. There is no oxygen left to power his movements, so all he can do is stare at the blinking lights of the Valkyrie, dying as he is dying, a coffin for his cooling corpse. At some point, the settling angle of the plane must shift, because the cabin begins to drain and he sinks down to the floor to lay face-up beneath the ruined console. His lungs are full of water, and he’s too weak to cough it out. He’s alive and awake, but he’s faded too far.

So he drowns, and drowns, and drowns, until darkness overcomes him and the afternoon light bursts into his eyes once he’s awoken, soaked through with sweat and urine and shaking unbearably. Like usual, Steve sits up, strips the bed, immediately bundles it and his dirtied shorts into the washing machine. He gives himself a cursory wipe-down with a shirt from his laundry hamper and tosses that in too, before he pulls out a mostly-empty bottle of eucalyptus-scented disinfectant from underneath his bathroom sink.

It’s just routine, so he mechanically wipes down the antibacterial vinyl mattress cover with more of his laundry, then spritzes it all and scrubs it vigorously with a clean rag. These, he adds to the load before he puts in the detergent and starts up the cycle.

Shower. Hot shower. Very hot shower. He mindlessly tongues one of his back molars, tasting blood—he’d cracked several in his sleep, but they’ll heal soon enough. Steve shaves and stands under the pounding spray until his teeth are solid before brushes them. The heat is welcome, and trumps the ugly sensation of water moving over his skin. He’s not submerged, so it’s not that bad.

Once he’s out, he towels himself entirely dry before he tugs on a SHIELD-emblazoned sweatshirt and sweatpants. He hasn’t bothered getting new ones, because it’s not like anybody is going to see him wearing them. New sheets go on the bed—Steve transfers his completed wash load to the dryer and starts up another wash cycle with the rest of his laundry.

He then starts to clean. Nothing else is dirty in the first place, but he doesn’t know what else to do. You’re supposed to clean before a party—that’s what Mrs. Barnes had said at holidays, and she’d tell Steve to help her cook because the dusting would exacerbate his asthma. Instead, the dusting and mopping would go to—

Steve vacuums. He checks all of his dishes (unused) and wipes down the inside of his fridge (mostly empty) and gets down on his knees to wipe the kitchen tiles with a wet rag instead of using that odd flat mop gathering dust in the laundry closet. It seems wasteful to throw away a cloth every single time, even if the cleaning cloth itself came in containers of a hundred and wasn’t made to last.

He rearranges the books on his bookshelves maybe three, four times, before he rearranges his furniture twice and ends up putting it back the way it was. He checks his TV. It turns on, that’s good. He puts a disk in the player to check. The menu for Snow White comes on just fine, so that’s good too. Steve packs everything away, and then ends up pacing the perimeter of his apartment, searching for scuffmarks or pinholes or bugs. He finds a spider, and throws it out of the window. He ends up wiping down all of his windows, and then the windowframes, and then all of the doorknobs. And the doors. And the doorframe.

He has a balcony, so he pulls out a bucket of water and scrubs the railing and the floor before he pulls out the brand-new grill from the balcony storage and stares at the bag of briquettes for a peculiarly long amount of time. He leans it against the grill, for a lack of anything else to do with it, and goes back inside.

He puts his dry, fresh sheets on the bed and transfers over his second load into the drier. He cleans his sink, he cleans his light fixtures, he scrubs the toilet twice and the bathtub once and wipes down the mirror until it shines. He doesn’t look himself in the eye as he does so.

By the time he’s done, it’s only maybe eight. The sun’s still out, so he goes out for a run. He pulls his hood up over his face, wears a pair of sports sunglasses, keeps his running pace average. Nobody notices him.

When Steve returns, he accidentally steps on his cleaned floor with his shoes, so he cleans everything again before he folds his last load of dried laundry, showers, eats, and crawls back into bed.

The next morning, he ends up running for three hours, and swings by a cheap place to eat two pizzas before he heads back. After he showers, he oscillates between formal or casual dress. Ultimately, he grabs a plain grey t-shirt and jeans, and he’s sure he looks like an anxious mess when the inevitable knock sounds on his front door. However, Darrell just shakes Steve’s hand and beams brightly, letting himself in.

The rest of them pile inside soon enough, and Steve’s startled to see an assortment of wrapped packages and bags accumulate on his coffee table in the living room. He walks over to where Patrick and Jack are prepping the grill, but Patrick simply gives him a punch on the shoulder and a bellow of laughter. “Birthday boy shouldn’t be hovering and wringing his hands, go crack open a beer on the couch!”

Steve goes to the couch. “Nice system you’ve got,” Brock says, gesturing at the modern sound system that had been in place when Steve had moved in. He’s moving stuff around; a decorative vase here, a wicker ball in a mirrored mosaic bowl there. Brock tweaks the nearest beige lampshade and leaves it off-kilter. Oddly, Steve finds this comforting.

“Thanks.”

Brock grins, and his eyes crinkle. He tugs Steve in for a one-armed embrace, clapping Steve’s far shoulder twice, and then squeezing, only to release and move away. For a second, Steve’s breath freezes in his throat. The height difference is the same, the timing—“C’mon, let me show you what we got.”

Steve trails behind him, shaken to his core. He hopes it doesn’t show, but from Brock’s unchanged expression, Steve’s still good. Nobody knows. Ok.

“Costco,” Brock declares, and flourishes his hand at the giant bottles of tequila, vodka, whiskey, rum, and bourbon lined up on the floor under the kitchen bar. “And _this_ ,” he says, reaching into one of the gift bags on the table to pull out another bottle.

It’s a hundred-year scotch.

“Jesus-fucking- _Christ_ ,” Hugh whispers from his kitchen barstool, surrounded by the husks of fresh white corn on the countertop. “How much did that cost you?”

Brock gives them all a noncommittal shrug. “Told some higher-ups we were throwin’ Captain America a birthday party. Thank the Secretary to the World Council, not me.”

David nearly chokes into the bowl of marinade, and dodges a swipe from Cameron, who is ogling the rare liquor as much as he is. “Secretary _Pierce_? Alexander _Pierce?_ ”

“And Fury, can’t forget good ol’ Nicholas Fury. He pitched in, too. It’s a joint gift.” Steve gingerly takes the offered bottle from Brock’s hands; their fingers brush, and Steve struggles to suppress the unwilling shiver that ripples through his spine. Brock looks, really _looks_ at him. Steve prays he doesn’t see, and averts his gaze to the bottle instead.

It’s in beautiful condition—were it not for the age on the label, it almost looks brand-new, like Steve himself. It’s touching, and eerie, and Steve wants to hand it back and never, ever see it again.

He can’t exactly do that, though. That’s not good manners, and his men, they’re here to have a good time, and Steve should, should let them have their good time. He should be happy, right? They’re here for him.

“I’ll thank them when I see them,” Steve replies, and inadvertently flounders when trying to figure out where to put it. Brock and the others laugh at him, and he hesitates, unsure—Brock reaches up to squeeze Steve at the junction of his neck and shoulder, reassuringly. Steve shakes.

“Give it here, you’re gonna drop that thing.”

Steve hands it over. This time, Brock presses a palm to the back of Steve’s hand before he draws away. It’s very warm.

He doesn’t register where Brock sets down the bottle, and gets distracted by Cameron waving him over to assess the meat before they slap it on the grill. He and David make Steve lean over their metal bowls of marinating ribs and insist that he pick a preference immediately. Steve shrugs. “Fuck your worthless asses off, just let the kid taste it later and he’ll decide then,” Jack shouts from the balcony, over the roasting scent of corn and toast.

The rest of the afternoon bleeds into the evening, blurring together in a surreal haze of friendly smacks and shoulder-bumping, burning through four cases of beer and six bygone liters of liquor by nine o’clock. Steve, of course, drinks the most, because Brock ends up plopping more and more and more into his lap whenever he runs dry.

None of it seems to work, no matter how fast Steve is drinking, or how much. He mouths at the rim of the bottle of whiskey over his third steak. It’s Jameson, but Steve tries not to think about the name, or how pleasant it tastes. It slides down his throat like water, and Darrell whoops when Steve sets the bottle down on the counter and spins it to show that it’s empty. Brock watches as the line of Steve’s throat plunges and bobs with every gulp, watches Steve lick his burning lips, watches Steve watch him back—Steve, who’s flushing hot with all the attention, his focus split between the food in his belly and the hands that tousle his hair.

The movie is actually a romance. Sort of. It has aliens, and the heroine has orange hair, while the hero is bald. Jack, Hugh, and David complain, but Patrick and Cameron shush them while Brock fetches the sheet cake from the fridge.

Nobody bothers with candles, or paper plates. They congregate around the sofa, claim a fork each, and attack it all at once while the movie plays in the background. The cake is cheap; the frosting is grainy and the filling is syrupy and the cake itself has rainbow speckles all throughout the inside. It’s good.

A couple of hours later, the movie’s menu scenes loop while Steve’s team makes him unwrap all of his gifts like he’s a child. Biologically, they’re all older than him, so it’s not as strange as it could be, he supposes.

He gets silver cufflinks shaped like A-bombs, from Jack. From David, a cleaning cloth for guns, printed with buxom brunettes in Union Jack bikinis. From Patrick, a four-pack of socks.

“Socks?” Steve asks. They’re thick, plush, and 100% cotton.

“For winter,” Patrick shrugs. Cotton cools. Cotton kills. Maybe Patrick had meant to get him wool, and accidentally picked up this set instead. The back label says that the brand also comes in synthetic mixes along with wool, so. Steve doesn’t dwell on it. Maybe he’ll wear them around the apartment, or when running.

Darrell gives him a coarse blue jacket, the kind that’s rough and quilted; it has that asymmetrical toggle closure that Steve keeps seeing on modern clothes. Under Steve’s hands, it feels like. Like. If he blinks a little rapidly, nobody seems to notice, so he folds it and sets it aside, carefully.

Cameron and Hugh had picked out their presents together—Steve unwraps Cameron’s to reveal a boxed collection of Captain America action movies, dating from the ‘50s to just four years ago, not long before he’d been found. Most of them are garish and disturbingly lurid. There’s one film that has him strangling actors in yellowface on the back cover above the synopsis—another has him leaping over a sand dune with an assault rifle in each hand and no shield in sight, his supposed face twisted into a guts-and-glory roar while men in culturally-inaccurate headscarves and robes flee in terror.

“They’re classics,” Hugh says. “Satire, basically.” He hands Steve the second part of the combo present, which ends up being The Complete Assventures of Slut Rogered, Captain Amour-Icky.

Steve stares at it, dumbstruck. The actor who is supposed to be _him_ is facing away from the camera on the front box cover, wearing nothing but assless, patriotic shorts that reveal buttocks striped with fingermark bruises and whip-welts; some of them have clearly cut into the actor’s skin. The man’s _bleeding_. Steve’s aware that porn of him exists, but he hadn’t expected something so graphically abusive. “The Amour-Icky is supposed to be a play on your reputation for being a prude in the history books,” Cameron explains, waving his hands in a light-hearted, humorous way. He points at the glistening skin above the cleft, slick with oil, or. Or something else. It looks a little opaque, tacky. “This particular series is well-known for pairing the prude thing with the God-Bless-America shit, yeah? And the ‘Good Soldier’ Sir-Yes-Sir thing, that too.”

Steve stares at him, blankly. Hugh gives his right bicep a playful slap. “This is famous stuff, you haven’t heard about it? It’s like one of those socialites’ leaked porn videos. If you have internet, you’ve probably seen it, or parts of it.”

Jack reaches over to pull Volume 1 out of the box, and passes it around. “It’s so over-the-top, it’s practically a comedy,” he adds. Steve swallows, when it comes back to him.

The scene depicted on the cover of Volume 1 has a different actor than the one on the cover of the box set. This new actor is small—he must be even shorter than Steve had been at 5’7”, and if possible, even thinner and paler. The face actually looks like Steve’s, with the black eye and split lip, too; what’s not similar is how the man is entirely naked, gagged with a red, waxy apple and kneeling with sprawled thighs in an alleyway puddle bearing an iridescent sheen of automotive oil. A dirty hand belonging to an off-screen individual is twisted in the back of the man’s blond hair, forcing him to arch his back to compensate for the wrists tied behind his back with coarse rope. The position looks painful, but also obscures the sight of the man’s genitals.

Steve’s not sure if it’s make-up, or not. It looks very real, and he slides the case back into the box without looking at the other cases inside. “Very funny,” he chokes out. It sounds passably normal. He tries to smile, and rolls his shoulders like it hadn’t affected him at all. He needs to present as stable, as normal—as a good guy, a funny guy, someone they’d want to watch their backs, someone whose back they’d want to watch. He can take a joke.

“Hey, one last thing,” Brock chuckles, leaning in. His cheek brushes Steve’s shoulder while he hands over the last item. “Here you go. Kind of a group gift, but I picked it out. Needed to give you something to come home to, right?”

The wrapped gift that Steve pulls from the bag turns out to be a succulent of some kind. His first impression is that it’s actually very cute, and he holds the pot in one hand to touch it with the other.

It hurts, unexpectedly, and Steve startles badly enough that David and Brock, on either side of him, reach out and hold him in place so he doesn’t drop the cactus and get dirt everywhere. “Woah there, careful. It’s spiky, sorry, I should have said.”

Steve looks at his hand. He pricked himself pretty badly; there’s blood welling up on his pointer, middle, and ring fingers, but this he just smears away with his thumb. Not a big deal.

“Doesn’t look spiky,” he says, after a moment of further inspection. The plant’s spines are entirely hidden by a white, dense, cotton-like fiber. “My mistake, I thought it would be soft to touch.”

There’s a huff by his ear, and Steve turns his head to find that he and Brock are practically nose-to-nose. “No harm done?”

“No, I’m fine.” Steve sets the cactus down on the coffee table with everything else. “Thanks, guys. I. I had a good time.”

Brock claps his hands. “Us, too.” He grins, and grabs the nearest beer. “A toast, to Steve Rogers! T-minus five to a century, woo! A guy the likes of whom America’s never seen before, and never will again!”

The wording is perhaps a little unusual, but Steve understands the good intention behind it, so he sits there and blushes in embarrassment as everyone clacks together their aluminum or glass and cheer him on to chug the last of the vodka and rum.

Within an hour and a half, everything’s packed up, either tucked away in Steve’s fridge as leftovers or tossed into the garbage and recycling. He knows how his team works when they’re on missions, always clean and precise—they leave his apartment in almost the same state in which they arrived.

Only Brock stays behind, helping him scrub up the grill accessories and pick up the fallen cornsilk sticking to the kitchen tile.

Elbow-deep in suds while Steve crunches the last aluminum can between his hands, Brock says, “It’s fun teasing you.”

“Huh?”

“Nah, you’re just good with it all, Cap. The guys trust you. You’re a good guy.”

Now that they’re alone, and Steve’s stuffed with food and a bustling, noisy night with good company, it’s easier to let the heat flush up his neck and onto his cheeks.

“I try.”

Brock finishes up with the sink, and wipes his hands on the kitchen towel that Steve keeps hanging from the oven door handle. “Since you’re _so_ good, you wanna try that scotch? I admit, I almost had an aneurism when the Secretary handed that to me, damn.”

“Please don’t have an aneurism,” Steve laughs—he doesn’t realize that it’s the first time he’s done so all night, not until Brock blinks at him and reaches out to clasp at his collarbone again, huffing in disbelief.

“I almost thought you didn’t have it in you,” Brock says. “I thought I was going to go home without a single peep from that mouth.”

“So, how much did you win?”

Steve gets an appreciative nod. “You’re sharp. Small wonder you lead us; I’m going to bag about four hundred.”

“That’s…a lot.” They’ve backed up to the wall; Steve’s head meets the plaster with a slight bump.

“Hey,” Brock reassures. “This was before. A whole year with us, and none of the guys knew you as anything other than Captain America, Supersoldier Extraordinaire. I mean, I won out because I knew otherwise, but you’re real to them now.”

Steve snorts. “Real, huh.” Steve doesn’t feel real, but Brock’s hand sure feels nice. Brock smells like barbecue and lousy frosting—underneath, there’s cedar and fennel and dusty orange, which is different. It’s not a bad different.

Brock’s hand crawls up, and brushes through the short hairs at the nape of Steve’s neck. Steve trembles. “That seems pretty real to me.”

In a fit of daring, Steve blurts, “You wanna find out how real I am?” Steve doesn’t feel real—but he’s here, isn’t he? He wants to be real. Tonight was the most real night he’s had in a long, long time. “C’mon,” he rasps, and does something incredibly stupid; he grabs Brock’s hip with one hand and pulls in, pressing his swelling erection into the firm muscle of Brock’s thigh.

Brock himself snarls, and his grip in Steve’s hair tightens to the point of agony, but it’s good, it’s so good. “Oh, _fuck yes_.”

The response almost brings Steve to his knees with how desperate Steve wants it, needs it. One second, the itch is hardly there. The next, Steve’s ready to beg his life away. “Please,” he croaks, grinding harder. “Please, please.”

Steve’s starving. He’s starving, but for what, he’s still doesn’t know. He kind of doesn’t care, so it’s fine when Brock shoves him down and slaps him in the face with his cock. Steve chokes on the first five or six thrusts, but he adapts quickly. It gets easier when one of Brock’s hands start stroking his face despite the relentless pace, and Steve leans into the hard palm. His cheeks get pinched and his neck is squeezed a little, but Brock keeps petting his hair and tracing his lips, so it’s all fine.

It’s like drifting, again, but it’s hot instead of cold; eventually, Steve’s head gets forced down and his nose mashes against the thatch of dark curls at the base of the dick he’s got halfway down his throat. He swallows, and after some time—short, long, it doesn’t matter—he gets yanked off with a squelching pop and wheezes like he hasn’t since he was twenty-five.

“Fuck, you’re _gorgeous_.” The praise makes Steve whimper. He grinds his palm down into his jeans, but Brock pulls his hand away. “Let me see, yeah, like that, wow. _Holy shit_.”

Steve masturbates on that dull schedule of “urgent need for release” rather than any actual arousal, so maybe that’s why his erection looks more impressive today than it usually does. Maybe he’s just horny as fuck, and it’s been long enough that he’s just forgotten what it was like. Whatever.

Brock toes off one of his socks, and steps down on Steve. “Aaaa _aaaaaa_ ,” Steve cries, aching. He tries to lean forward, to press his forehead onto Brock’s clothed thigh for some comfort, but Brock nudges him back against the wall.

“Nope, nope, I wanna see.” When Steve complies, trembling, Brock’s tone turns to one of approving satisfaction. “Good, so good. You look like you’re burning up with that blush. Take it all off, would’ya?”

Steve does. He’s breathing heavily, and the sole of Brock’s left foot is shining with precum. It’s getting between his toes and everything. Brock’s leaning casually on the kitchen counter, his soft cock still hanging out of his jeans. Steve wants to put his mouth on it again, for something. Anything. Please, anything.

Brock pulls the scotch out from where he’s secreted it, and takes his time undoing the foil up top to reveal the cork. He strokes Steve’s bobbing erection with his calluses the entire time. He doesn’t look at Steve once.

“Birthday _boy_ ,” Brock says, after maybe ten minutes of languorous torment. The cork pops off into his hand with a sound that echoes through the kitchen. “Birthday boy gets first taste.” He takes his foot off of Steve, and crouches down to tip the bottle to Steve’s mouth. “How is it? Good?”

It’s a struggle to speak. Steve has to swallow several times, gasp. He’s put his hands flat on the wall, and his thighs are spread. His shoulders are flush back against the vertical surface, and his breathing is irregular from the strain of keeping still. So yeah, it’s hard to talk right away. Brock, though, waits until Steve replies before he takes a sip for himself.

“Good,” Steve says, hoarse. “Can I—“

“Can what?”

“Hah, h-have.”

“Hm?”

“More, please. P-please, can I have more?” What is he asking for? Does it even matter? Steve’s drifting, and it’s hot, and it’s not cold. He hates the cold.

“Mm. Sure thing, Cap.” Brock takes another sip, rolls it around in his mouth, sighs a little. He stands. “Look up.”

Steve does, and the scotch splatters down onto his face; it burns. It makes him gasp, and the stream hits his tongue when he opens his mouth to cry out once the pressure resumes on his crotch. This time, Brock doesn’t push him away when Steve leans forward to rub his face on the denim. The liquor scorches the inside of his nose, irritates his eyes—he weeps, involuntarily. Somehow, it’s worse than the time he had to stand in a sealed room with the other SHIELD trainees and stew in tear gas. At least there…at least there, he knew what he was doing. But that doesn’t matter, does it? He’s here.

With that, it doesn’t take much. Steve wheezes and writhes for maybe another twenty seconds or so, then ejaculates messily all over Brock’s foot. “Gross,” Brock chuckles. “Help a guy out?” He bumps Steve’s slack jaw with his knee, so it’s only following the natural course of events for Steve to dip down and clean it up his release with his mouth. Brock had just mopped up the kitchen floor with the modern mop, so it’s not so bad. Steve’s careful to lap up what’s spilled into the grout between the tiles, and sucks Brock’s skin as best as he’s able.

He straightens up when he’s done, and Brock pinches his lower lip between two fingers. It’s so puffy Steve can look down his nose and see it pulled away from his teeth. “I bet if you tried,” Brock says, “You could kill a man with these alone. Unbelievable.”

Steve coughs. His throat doesn’t feel raw from earlier anymore. “Is that a challenge?”

Brock tweaks one of Steve’s nipples. _Ahhhh_. “Gonna kill me, Cap? I’m making birthday boy all _dirty_.”

“You haven’t seen me get fucking dirty,” Steve snipes back, and blushes, hard. This is all kind of new. That’s ok. He knows this, he knows how to bluff. He was good at it, once. It shouldn’t be too hard to brush the dust off.

He stands up. Brock scratches at his abdomen with short, clean nails. They leave behind little red lines that disappear within seconds. “Time to show me what you’ve got.”

They don’t actually make it to bed. Steve allows himself to be shoved down again onto his carpet, and when Brock looks around for lube, Steve crawls over to fish out a pump bottle from his nightstand. He gets a whistle for the view.

“Not Vaseline?”

“I like this future invention. A lot easier to apply.”

Fingering takes an absurdly long time. Steve doesn’t beg, because the sharp edge has died off—the point of this now is to make Brock reach orgasm again, which he hasn’t, not yet.

Steve sure as fuck wants to beg, though. “What is this,” Steve groans, “A docu—hah, uh—mentary?” Enhanced senses, enhanced everything. Steve’s come twice since Brock’s started putting fingers in his ass. He’s terribly sensitive, and it’s starting to hurt.

He gets a sharp twist and an internal scratch for his remark. Brock digs a thumbnail into Steve’s perineum, and Steve quietly uses his inner arm to wipe away the tears that spring up. “The majestic Stevus Rogerus lays spread out and ass-up in lordosis, overeager for penetration.”

“W-was that necessar—unh, ah, _ah_ —“

Brock withdraws, and the void of it leaves Steve clenching on nothing and terribly lonely. “You clean?” he hears.

“I—yes, why?”

“’Cause I am, and I want to feel you, and I couldn’t give a shit about a condom right now.”

“About your choice of wo—oh, _ungh_ —Brock, _ngghhh, ahh, ah—_ “

Brock goes in. It’s slow, because Steve’s still tight, and it’s new. He has to drop down onto his face, and clutches at the carpet while he gasps in pain, his insides rippling and contracting in rejection.

“You good?” Brock huffs, and Steve nods in panic, biting through one side of his tongue. Steve’s good. He has to be good, he has to make this good.

The first few thrusts are extremely difficult, but after that, Steve manages to adjust again and it’s easy, relatively speaking. The rhythm is comforting—the rough scrape of Brock’s clothes are grounding against his ass and thighs, and the friction of the fabric feels delicious, even if the wet, oppressive stretch of Brock going in and out of his body isn’t really. As for the sound their coupling makes—Steve’s not sure how to place it. He’s heard it before, but coming from him? He doesn’t know what to think of it, but now’s not the time for that.

Occasionally, Brock brushes up against something (the prostate, Steve thinks. He hasn’t played with it before, he doesn’t know for sure if that’s what it is) that sends liquid velvet tingling out of the small of Steve’s back, but it’s not sustained. Once, Brock rubs against it three or four times in row, and Steve sobs at how nice and warm and close it begins to feel—only to have it miss on the next thrust and strike irregularly for the rest of the time.

He still manages to come when Brock takes mercy on him and starts jerking him off in time. Steve gets up to three before the headache of sustained effort makes him arch his back down to give some release to his burning thighs. “H-how come yo-ou, uh, ahhh, haaaaahhhh, h-have, haven’t—?”

Steve can feel Brock shrug. There’s a pat on his asscheek, then a sudden, sharp smack to the other; Steve jackknifes, wailing. He’d clenched down in shock, and the internal pressure had been shockingly, distressingly good. Brock pets his reddened skin while Steve mewls through several more cracks on the tender flesh at the junction of his legs and ass.

“Maybe if we mix it up, yeah?”

They end up in a position where Steve’s sitting on Brock’s lap, stretched out with his thighs on either side of Brock’s waist. “I’ve been doing all the work,” Brock says. He lies back and tucks his hands behind his head, elbows akimbo. His lips form an anticipatory moue. “Ride me to hell and back, soldier.”

Steve braces his palms on the carpet under Brock’s armpits, digs in his toes. He slips off on the first try, and ashamed, quickly grabs the swollen cock and sinks back down in one smooth motion. He’s open and hungry enough to do that, now. Once he works out a good way of fucking himself without falling off, Steve settles into a rhythm that has the erection inside of him grinding up against that goddamned gland consistently enough to make his blush return and spread liberally across his neck and stomach.

“Keep going,” Brock whispers, fisting his hand in Steve’s hair. He slaps Steve across the face, hard. Steve shakes, and keeps going. The sensation of the sting is quickly washed out from the pleasure; there’s sweat beginning to roll down his skin.

He loses track of time, again. He thinks he manages to orgasm another few times before Brock growls and flips them, rutting violently until heat floods Steve’s rectum and dribbles out from where they’re joined.

Brock collapses beside him, lifts one of Steve’s rugburned hands. It’s the hand that had been pricked by the cactus, still somehow bearing little rust smears of dried blood. Brock lifts the fingers to his mouth, and sucks them in one by one. He’s got long lashes, if sparse. “Ok,” he says. “Y’got me. I got you _way_ more times, though.”

Steve closes his eyes, glowing with heat and exhaustion. The fact that he’s disgusting hasn’t sunk in enough for him to care. “Double standard,” he whispers back. He doesn’t register falling asleep, but he does.

In the morning, he’s alone. There’s dried semen flaking on the inside of his thighs, and more of it across his belly and chest. There’s a lot on the carpet, mottled yellow.

He wobbles to his feet. He feels empty, and as if out of sympathy, his sphincter twitches, as sore as the rest of him. He doesn’t bother getting dressed, because he knows his apartment is empty, save for him.

He passes the kitchen, and pauses to look at where he’d been last night. There’s no evidence anything had happened, although the bottle of scotch rests on the counter, neatly re-corked. Steve’s clothes lie folded beside the bottle, with his discarded underwear lying on top of the pile of fabric.

The gifts he’d received last night are neatly stacked on the coffee table—the cactus, however, is set by his phonograph.

There’s a note underneath it. _Last night was a wild, wild ride,_ it says. _Thanks._ The handwriting is neat, blocky and slanted. _You’re a doll. Shame you don’t show that side more often. Maybe you’d have something a little more than this fella to welcome you home at night_.

_See you at work, birthday boy. Sweet dreams—Rumlow_

Steve folds the note, several times. He folds it as small as he can, and wordlessly tucks it inside the inner rim of the cactus’ pot. Against his better judgment, he reaches out again, and strokes it.

It’s soft.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. 
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://requiodile.tumblr.com/). I'll be happy to answer any and all of your questions, but if you want, check out my [fic tag](http://requiodile.tumblr.com/tagged/birthday-boy-fic/) for for preexisting discussions/more information!


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